THE BUREAUCRACY

Measuring their effectiveness by how many new laws they enact, Congress has been on a legislative binge for over 60 years. To enforce those laws, they empower the bureaucrats to write regulations and direct the States to enforce them.

Thus, we have the federal bureaucracy with mirror copies at the State, County and, often, Municipal levels. Each level of the State bureaucracies are required to adopt and enforce the rules and regulations of the federal and are free to add some of their own. If the States refuse to do this, they lose a substantial chunk of federal funds transferred to them as "Revenue Sharing." Consequently, we suffer from trickle-down bureaucracy.

This is smart "politics" on the part of Congress. First, they get credit for "solving" a problem. Since enforcement is passed off to the States, the dent in the federal budget is negligible. Then, with primary enforcement being done by the States rather than the federal bureaucracy, the citizens who run afoul of the regulations written by the federal blame the State Government for their misfortune. It's a win/win situation for the feds and a lose/lose for the States who not only have to pay for it, but have to take the brunt of citizen anger.

Slick.

Real Slick.

At the end of 2006, there were 144,040 pages in the Code of Federal Regulations. In that almost undecipherable mass there has to be one, two or a dozen that can jump up and bite any one of us at any moment. When it happens, the bureaucrats have the full force of government behind them while all we can do is go broke paying attorneys.

How big is the bureaucracy? Not counting Congress, the White House, the State Department, the CIA or the Military in uniform, there is 1 fulltime civilian federal employee for every 123 Americans. But stand by, with virtually each new law, the number grows. What’s the breaking point? 1 to 100? 1 to 75? Where does it stop?

After their experience with a King, the Founding Fathers feared an Imperial Presidency. Instead, we have a runaway Congress that has created and fostered an Imperial Bureaucracy, a virtually independent, ever growing government answerable to no one, staffed by unelected bureaucrats who write rules and regulations with the force of law and lord it over us as if they were our Imperial Masters.

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At this point we invite you to take a side trip to Tip Of The Iceberg which is just 15 out of hundreds of examples of bureaucratic abuse. It is not required reading, because these examples, coupled with Hotlining might cause severe depression.

If you do not want to take the side trip, go to Local Government